Our leaders have betrayed us in the name of political and financial expediency.

Our leaders have betrayed us in the name of political and financial expediency.

The constitution guarantees all South Africans an environment that does not damage their health. But millions of people in Gauteng and North West are being exposed to a chemical witch's brew that the gold mines spew each day into our waterways.

This stuff is so toxic it threatens all life. Dams have accumulated so much uranium in their waters and sediments that they should be declared nuclear sites.

But officials and politicians are so worried about offending investors and mining magnates that they have done precious little to enforce the laws that supposedly protect us from the worst excesses of a capitalism gone mad.

The price of the luxury estates of mining magnates and their co-opted BEE partners will be paid mostly by the poor, especially those in informal settlements squatting alongside the contaminated waterways.

Official nonchalance by the so-called National Nuclear Regulator, the Department of Minerals and Energy, the Department of Water Affairs and the Department of Environment and Tourism, as well as their minions in provincial and local government, will be paid for in the souls of the rich and poor who succumb to this poisonous broth.

Researchers have been warning about the danger for decades, but almost nothing has been done to curtail it.